So a fellow permanent temp sent me an e-mail this weekend . . . another opportunity to work at a large firm which pays it’s regular attorneys $150,000 — but will pay us a whopping $30 an hour to do the work that’s beneath those attorneys.

When you have no job and not many prospects it’s very tempting, but is it a good idea?

According to conventional career wisdom (see here), it doesn’t move you forward any in your career, and in fact, will likely cause permanent detriment to your long term employment plans.  You know how it is — people to pay you to wash their floors, and they can’t see you doing anything more than washing their floors — not even washing the windows.

Adam’s idea, of course, is to take a sabbatical.  Maybe some time off, he says, will help me focus on things other than jobs, and more elusively a career.  I can, you know, hang curtains, supervise the painting of our interior, train the dogs . . . .

Several dictionaries define sabbatical as a leave from employment, a time to pursue a concentrated course of study.  Now if one doesn’t really have employment, how is a sabbatical not just an excuse to sit at home eating bon bons?

In some world where money didn’t matter at all (and those student loan people weren’t barking down your neck every month for their fifteen hundred dollars — nine years out of school) — it would be a downright charming idea.

Downright charming.

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